Golan Levin: Welcome back every­one. My name’s Golan Levin, pro­fes­sor of art at Carnegie Mellon and direc­tor of the Art && Code fes­ti­val. And this is our final ses­sion of Art && Code: Homemade: Digital Tools and Crafty Approaches. I’m thrilled to wel­come you to the begin­ning of our evening ses­sion. We have four pre­sen­ta­tions this evening. At 5:00 o’clock, present­ly, we have ann haey­oung, then Dr. Vernelle A.A. Noel at 5:30 Eastern time, then Hannah Epstein at 6:00 o’clock, and then Kelli Anderson at 6:30 PM Eastern time are the four pre­sen­ta­tions that round out and con­clude Art && Code: Homemade. 

It’s now my plea­sure to intro­duce you to ann haey­oung. She is an artist based in Los Angeles and uses video and sculp­ture to exam­ine ques­tions around tech­nol­o­gy, iden­ti­ty, and labor. She’s cur­rent­ly an MFA stu­dent at UCLA. ann haeyoung. 

ann haey­oung: Hi every­one. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for being here. I’m real­ly excit­ed to be speak­ing to you and to be here at Art && Code. I hope you’ve enjoyed the talks that we’ve been see­ing so far. Really inspir­ing stuff, so excit­ing. And thank you to Golan and the Art && Code team, to Lea, Madeline, Claire, Bill and Lisa for hav­ing me here and for orga­niz­ing such a great con­fer­ence to kick off the new year. It’s been a pret­ty wild ride already. 

And I wan­na begin also by acknowl­edg­ing the Tongva peo­ple, on whose unced­ed lands I am cur­rent­ly liv­ing and mak­ing. And the Tongva peo­ple, for those who don’t know, are the orig­i­nal stew­ards of the land that many of us may know now as Los Angeles. 

So, my name is ann haey­oung. I use she/her/hers pro­nouns. I’m gonna start screen shar­ing as well. 

I’m an artist, and a tech­nol­o­gist, and as Golan men­tioned I’m in my first year of an MFA at UCLA. So this is actu­al­ly the first time I’ve described myself as a tech­nol­o­gist. I usu­al­ly say tech work­er although I am not work­ing in the tech indus­try cur­rent­ly. So I’m still kind of like work­ing through the labels that I want to use, but per­haps that is a good intro­duc­tion to some of what I’m plan­ning to share with you today. Which is basi­cal­ly what is tech­nol­o­gy and by exten­sion code, and what is my inter­est in it. 

So I think tech­nol­o­gy, and code as a sub­set of tech­nol­o­gy is best thought of as a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of our social and cul­tur­al val­ues. So in our soci­ety, we cre­ate tech­nol­o­gy as a means to con­trol nature and/or human rela­tion­ships, and as a way to rein­force dom­i­nant pow­er struc­tures. For exam­ple, ear­ly com­put­ers were tools of cat­e­go­riza­tion and con­trol. So a key impe­tus for the first elec­tron­ic tab­u­la­tor, which you see here, was the 1890 US Census. So the pre­vi­ous 1880 Census had tak­en eight years to count by hand. And so a cen­sus employ­ee named Herman Hollerith cre­at­ed an auto­mat­ic count­ing machine, which is what’s pic­tured. So the desire for this machine and the cre­ation of this machine fol­lowed from the desire to reduce peo­ple to data points as a way to allo­cate gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and resources and to be able to do that quick­ly. So it’s the social and polit­i­cal val­ues which were the dri­ving force behind ear­ly com­put­er design and cre­ation. And this same log­ic applies to even the most cutting-edge AI we cre­ate today. 

And what is my rela­tion­ship to tech­nol­o­gy? So pri­or to grad school, I was work­ing in the tech indus­try. I was at Google for a while, and and then at an AI infra­struc­ture start­up. And I worked in pro­gram and prod­uct man­age­ment. And I do some­times use code and elec­tron­ics and AI more direct­ly in my work, but I try to use them pret­ty min­i­mal­ly, and maybe the rea­sons for that will become clear. And I like mak­ing things in low-tech ways. And I think today I’m only going to be show­ing the video work that I’m making. 

So maybe you could tell from my def­i­n­i­tion about what I think tech­nol­o­gy is that my inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy is in the sys­tems that we erect around the cre­ation and dis­sem­i­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy on a large scale, rather than focus­ing on using a par­tic­u­lar type of tech­nol­o­gy. So part of those sys­tems and what I want to focus on today is the phys­i­cal space in which we make tech­nol­o­gy, and the peo­ple who are mak­ing tech. So the work­ers who write the code, who make the designs, who assem­ble the machines. And places peo­ple tech; these come togeth­er in fac­to­ries of course, but also in offices, which is what I’m going to start with. 

So I want­ed to show you all a few videos from my office sketch series and this screen­shots of some of those. And even though these were made in 2019 and obvi­ous­ly not in the home, I think they’re an exam­ple of how I found space for cre­ativ­i­ty where I was, and an illus­tra­tion of how impor­tant place is to my work. 

So I felt real­ly stuck at this office. I was tak­ing week­ends or a few days off here and there to work on art projects. And it felt real­ly dis­joint­ed. So it was dif­fi­cult for me to be going into work every day and you know, smil­ing, bit­ing my tongue, and then going home and feel­ing like I was being some­one else. Especially because my work is extreme­ly crit­i­cal of the tech indus­try. So I guess to deal with that, I start­ed look­ing more close­ly at the objects and the topog­ra­phy of this place where I was spend­ing a huge chunk of my time. And I start­ed to see this place as a col­lab­o­ra­tor in my art­mak­ing. And as I start­ed think­ing more about this space that I was occu­py­ing, I start­ed real­ly get­ting inter­est­ed in the office and par­tic­u­lar­ly the tech office as a tool of sur­veil­lance and social control. 

So this is from social the­o­rist George Lipsitz from his book How Racism Takes Place. And in it he describes some­thing called the white spa­tial imag­i­nary. So the white spa­tial imag­i­nary has cul­tur­al as well as social con­se­quences. It struc­tures feel­ings as well as social insti­tu­tions. The white spe­cial imag­i­nary ide­al­izes ​‘pure’ and homo­ge­neous spaces, con­trolled envi­ron­ments, and pre­dictable pat­terns of design and behav­ior. So think about that in rela­tion­ship to tech. And he’s talk­ing about the space of the sub­urbs a lot when he’s like— So the white spa­cial imag­i­nary is not a par­tic­u­lar place, but he’s relat­ing it to the space of the sub­urbs. But I think a lot of what he’s talk­ing about is applic­a­ble to cor­po­rate tech offices. And so these spaces are real­ly intend­ed for and built for straight white man, and every­one who falls out­side of those para­me­ters, who’s not pure and homo­ge­neous, kind of feels that dis­con­nect that this is not a space that’s meant for them. Or us. 

And I think it’s impos­si­ble for us not to inter­nal­ize the mes­sag­ing of a place when we’re spend­ing a lot of time in that place. And once we inter­nal­ize this mes­sag­ing, that’s then going to become expressed in the work that we make while we’re in that place. And so anoth­er way of say­ing this is I believe office spaces and tech office space is rein­forced white suprema­cist and cap­i­tal­ist ideas of pow­er and human rela­tion­ships, and that inevitably finds its way into the tech­nol­o­gy we make when we’re in those spaces. 

So, just kind of switch­ing gears and show­ing some of the videos that I was mak­ing kind of react­ing to these ideas and my rela­tion­ship to these spaces and my feel­ings of dis­con­nect in them. I want­ed to start with this video which is called Conference Call. These don’t have the most orig­i­nal names. 

So for any­one who’s ever worked in an office or sat through a con­fer­ence call, per­haps this feel­ing will be famil­iar to you. But some­times it felt like I was dis­so­ci­at­ing from my body. I knew I was sit­ting there, and there was all this tech jar­gon com­ing out of my mouth, but my head was com­plete­ly some­where else. And I was­n’t phas­ing out, because I was the one talk­ing. But it was like I was watch­ing some­body else using my body and talk­ing through my mouth. So this is kind of express­ing some of those feel­ings. And some­thing else I noticed sit­ting in these con­fer­ence meet­ings, because these were spaces are over­whelm­ing­ly male, that the sound of the laugh­ter was very bassy. So that was some­thing that I was also putting in this piece. 

And in these office sketch­es, all of them, I was think­ing about how we have to hide or make up for these non-normative parts of our iden­ti­ties when we’re in these work­places. And the fur­ther one is away from the white male ide­al of the employ­ee, the more one has to work to fit in. And there’s more cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance or gaslight­ing that you face try­ing to just insist on the valid­i­ty of your own experiences. 

So, this next one I will show… This one takes place in my office bath­room. And again, I will play a bit and turn the sound down.

So, in the begin­ning you see me typ­ing out the Morse code for ​“SOS.” And I’m hit­ting arbi­trary num­bers and just using the sounds of the beeps to do that. And the bath­room I think is sup­posed to be a place of solace, because it’s sup­posed to be a pri­vate place. It’s some­where you can go to cry, to relax, to gath­er yourself—obviously to relieve your­self. It’s a very human and vul­ner­a­ble place, and it’s one that all of us need. And sup­pos­ed­ly it’s a place with­out sur­veil­lance. But office bath­rooms are a whole oth­er story. 

In this bath­room you can see that the walls and the stall doors don’t touch the floor. So any­body who’s in there can mon­i­tor the oth­er occu­pants. In my office, this one that you see here, bath­rooms weren’t gen­der neu­tral, so they’re also a place where your gen­der is scru­ti­nized and sur­veilled. I mean the fact that there’s even a key code to get into those bath­rooms says a lot about how they’re try­ing to con­trol the space as well. And I as far as I know nev­er worked in a work­place where they tracked the length and fre­quen­cy of my bath­room breaks, but that cer­tain­ly is an issue for many work­ers. So the pol­i­tics of bath­room archi­tec­ture and bath­room track­ing is anoth­er way we declare who a nor­ma­tive work­er is. 

And the last one that I will from this series is this one. So this one the sound is real­ly just my walk­ing, so I’m just gonna talk over it. But this one, again not the most orig­i­nal title, is called Office Plants.

So I remem­ber this one time walk­ing down the hall­way at Google and sud­den­ly notic­ing that there was a lot more plants. I think that they had just installed a plant wall and it just like…it just felt real­ly dif­fer­ent. And I had­n’t real­ly thought that much about it at the time, kind of filed it away, but in this office that I was work­ing in, many years lat­er I start­ed notic­ing all these plants again. It’s hard to miss them. The office was just like filled with plants. And even all the pho­tographs on the walls, which you saw a few of, were pho­tographs of plants. 

And so I start­ed won­der­ing how did we all end up here, you know, in this box? The win­dows that don’t open under these ter­ri­ble flu­o­res­cent lights. We both just kind of exist in ser­vice of this com­pa­ny. And so I start­ed look­ing into the his­to­ry of office plants. And as I began research­ing, I real­ized that the his­to­ry of office plants is basi­cal­ly the sto­ry of European colo­nial­ism. And I start­ed learn­ing about the cen­tral role of plants and plant theft and the plant trade in the suc­cess of the European colo­nial enter­prise. And while there were plants that Europeans stole to cul­ti­vate in plan­ta­tions, many plants were tak­en as sci­en­tif­ic curiosi­ties and to quench the thirst of rich Europeans who want­ed to present them­selves as world­ly indi­vid­u­als by show­ing off a vast col­lec­tion of so-called exot­ic plants. And we see that colo­nial lega­cy in the way that tech com­pa­nies use and dis­play plants in their office spaces today. 

So dur­ing the colo­nial era, wealthy peo­ple would build these huge green­hous­es. Glass was very expen­sive, and that was just kind of a way for them to tele­graph their wealth. And tech com­pa­nies today like­wise build these elab­o­rate green­hous­es and plant walls as a way to sig­nal their wealth and their suc­cess. Living walls and green­hous­es are still incred­i­bly expen­sive to build and main­tain. And just think about the plants and how they exist in this space in rela­tion­ship to the quote I shared ear­li­er about the white spa­tial imag­i­nary. The plants are a very care­ful­ly curat­ed, cul­ti­vat­ed, and main­tained ver­sion of nature. And they are real­ly just com­modi­ties. They’re there to serve a PR purpose. 

So, I felt a kin­ship with this plant, the one you—well, all of them, but the one you see me tak­ing a cut­ting of specif­i­cal­ly, because it was right in front of my desk. And I also real­ized that there real­ly was­n’t a way for me to help this plant. The best I could do per­haps was to take a cut­ting and maybe some­day plant that cut­ting some­where where it could thrive. But even that, tak­ing a cut­ting, is a vio­lent act. So kind of it was a recog­ni­tion of how colo­nial­ism and cap­i­tal­ism have touched every part of our world. We can’t just cut off a part and run away. There’s real­ly no easy fix, and in real­i­ty I don’t think there’s real­ly a way out with­out pain. 

And so this brings me to some of what I am think­ing about and work­ing on in 2020. 

So, in 2020 as we all know, every­thing was total­ly turned on its head. I was­n’t work­ing at this job any­more. And even if I was, I would­n’t have had access to this office space to con­tin­ue mak­ing this kind of work. I also moved across the coun­try dur­ing this time, in hopes that school would be par­tial­ly offline but it’s been entire­ly vir­tu­al so far. And so try­ing to get to know a new place and a new com­mu­ni­ty with­out actu­al­ly being able to go out­side, real­ly, or go any­where and get to know the place has been very dis­com­bob­u­lat­ing. And as I have men­tioned a few times, place is a real­ly impor­tant part of my work. So even before those office sketch­es, the screen­shots you see here are of two video per­for­mances, one where I trav­eled out to a Tesla fac­to­ry, and anoth­er in front of an Amazon ware­house and cre­at­ed per­for­mances that were react­ing to the phys­i­cal loca­tion and pres­ence of those build­ings. And so doing this kind of stuff was­n’t real­ly pos­si­ble. So, this is one of the first things I did, which is very dif­fer­ent than what I had been doing before. 

I took a time-lapse. I’ve been very inter­est­ed in time-lapse and get­ting bet­ter at them. This one was just one pho­to a day so its very jerky. But I took a time-lapse of the cut­ting that I’d tak­en from the mon­stera, first root­ing it in water and then trans­fer­ring to a pot of soil. And then I took that time-lapse and put it with all these black and white images of Wardian cas­es. So the Wardian case was a tech­nol­o­gy that was cre­at­ed dur­ing the colo­nial era, and it was used to ship plants. So pri­or to the cre­ation of the Wardian case, they would just kind of ships seeds, ​“they” being the colonists, would ship seeds and many of the seats would go bad on these like month-long sea voy­ages. But with this Wardian case which is essen­tial­ly a ter­rar­i­um, they were able to ship liv­ing plants, which are much hardier so they had a much high­er rate of suc­cess of mov­ing these plants all around the world. And this com­plete­ly changed what they were able to do, where the colonists were able to go, the kind of plan­ta­tions and plants they were able to cul­ti­vate. And I mean, even today we have plants from all over the world kind of growing—especially in a place like Los Angeles you have plants from every­where grow­ing here. So you know, this is all that legacy. 

And I was also think­ing a lot, as I men­tioned before, about plants and tech com­pa­nies par­tic­u­lar­ly. And so this led me to these guys. These are Amazon’s bios­pheres. So Amazon built these huge bios­pheres, which are just big green­hous­es, in down­town Seattle. And in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances I would’ve loved to trav­el out to Seattle and some­how inter­act with these actu­al spheres and the work­ers that were work­ing in this place. But of course that’s not pos­si­ble. So when I was think­ing about what to do and try­ing to plan this performance—when I plan these per­for­mances I usu­al­ly spend a lot of time on Google Maps or watch­ing videos or look­ing at oth­er peo­ple’s pho­tographs try­ing to get to know a place before I can trav­el out there, if I trav­el out there. So I was look­ing at all these YouTube videos and try­ing to decide what to do, and I kind of decid­ed that you know, I’m not going to be able to do some­thing phys­i­cal so maybe I’ll just kind of con­tin­ue with this dig­i­tal col­lage for­mat. And so I will show this one. 

Still from 25000 Plants rough cut

So, basi­cal­ly what this is is the hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist at Amazon giv­ing a tour to a newsper­son, news­cast­er, local news sta­tion about these Amazon spheres. And like, talk about the lega­cy of colo­nial­ism in the tech indus­try. There real­ly is no bet­ter exam­ple than Amazon and Jeff Bezos right now. So this is still in progress. I’m now kind of think­ing about it, mak­ing things that hap­pen when you kind of step through this wall. But real­ly this was kind of just some­thing that I thought was fun to do, it’s some­thing I’ve been doing a lot more of recent­ly, is tak­ing exist­ing videos from online and insert­ing myself into them or oth­er­wise kind of play­ing with them to height­en and point out the ridicu­lous­ness of what they are talk­ing about. 

So, the last thing that I will show today is anoth­er thing that’s kind of in progress. But I’ve been work­ing on these infinitely-looping videos. And I’ve been also using myself a lot in these works. But in each of these videos I’m repeat­ing a phrase which is some­thing that I’ve heard or heard oth­ers say or I’ve said myself to jus­ti­fy my work in the tech indus­try, and pair­ing each of these phras­es with a piece of office fur­ni­ture. And so I kind of mocked these up quick­ly. I’m in the process of putting back­grounds in. But I mocked these up quick­ly to give you a sense of what these might look like. So I won’t play all of them, but in this one with the red, I’m say­ing, ​“I can do good at scale.” This one is, ​“We’re like a fam­i­ly here.” And this one, which I’ll share, is, ​“I can change things from the inside.” 

So sor­ry it’s a bit qui­et, but I’ve kind of got­ten real­ly inter­est­ed in this infi­nite loop as a way to express this feel­ing when you’re kind of stuck in this place or in this indus­try and mak­ing things that maybe you don’t feel excit­ed about or believe in. But you’re not real­ly sure how to leave. And so these are kind of the sto­ries that we tell our­selves, like ​“I can change things from the inside” but real­ly…can we? 

And so this is actu­al­ly I guess a ques­tion that I get a lot from peo­ple, is you know, can I change things from the inside? Should I just leave the tech indus­try? What should I do? Especially for our fel­low peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, anti-racist, all these like…anti all these ter­ri­ble things. Like how can we exist in this indus­try and make work for these com­pa­nies if we feel so ter­ri­ble about a lot of the things that they’re doing or what they stand for. 

And I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think you have to leave the tech indus­try. I think that’s a very per­son­al, indi­vid­ual deci­sion that folks have to make depend­ing on a lot of things about per­son­al cir­cum­stances. But I do encour­age peo­ple to be hon­est with them­selves, our­selves, about what the com­pa­nies we work for are doing and what our place in those com­pa­nies is. 

And yeah, so these are some of the things that I’m work­ing and think­ing about and I want­ed to share with you all. 

And I just want­ed to share quick­ly a behind-the-scenes shot of what this looks like in my apart­ment right now. It’s been inter­est­ing this past year. And so I know this is prob­a­bly a bit dif­fer­ent than a lot of the oth­er talks tonight regard­ing code, but I hope that I have encour­aged you to think about the his­to­ry and pol­i­tics of the tech indus­try for folks who work in tech, and what it means to be some­body who’s work­ing with and cre­at­ing new tech­nol­o­gy. Because I think artists are the ones who are rethink­ing tech and build­ing tech total­ly out­side of these sys­tems. And so there’s so much hope in what you all are doing. And I real­ly love chat­ting with folks about all these ideas. And I would love to meet each and every one of you, so hope­ful­ly I will see you in the Discord or on email or in oth­er places. Thank you. 

Golan Levin: Thank you, Ann. There’s a lot to think about. And as you and I have dis­cussed some­time ago when we were talk­ing, your work has a rela­tion­ship to code that apart from your own use of it from time to time is really…you’ve tele­scoped out so far that we can real­ly think about the struc­tures in which code is used and the ways we relate to it. I’m just grate­ful so much for your talk. 

There’s won­der­ful ques­tions in the dis­cord. Claire is com­ment­ing how it’s inter­est­ing to think about office-made as a sub­set of homemade. And some of the oth­er pre­sen­ters made work which was…the intend­ed audi­ence is sort of the bored at work peo­ple. And in rela­tion­ship to the bored at home net­work, your work has a rela­tion­ship there. 

There’s a ques­tion from Andy Quitmeyer in the chat here, which I’m gonna look at. And he asks, ​“With so many cor­po­rate jobs moved to homes, is there a new dig­i­tal ver­sion of some of these things that ann describes that the cor­po­ra­tions push? What’s the dig­i­tal mon­stera plant or the dig­i­tal locked bathroom?” 

ann haey­oung: Yeah, that’s an excel­lent ques­tion. I guess I’m curi­ous to hear from all of you know like what those might be. I mean the vir­tu­al back­ground I guess is some­thing that is this strange thing that we’re inter­act­ing with. I know dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies are send­ing phys­i­cal things, like maybe deliv­er­ing food or things like that that could be something…like a strange inter­ac­tion that’s hap­pen­ing? There’s also a lot hap­pen­ing with com­pa­nies that are track­ing the amount of time that you’re spend­ing in the workplace. 

But I guess that does­n’t quite answer the ques­tion, but some­thing I am real­ly think­ing more about is like, what the rela­tion­ship with dig­i­tal scans of things, and if that is also a form of col­o­niza­tion. And there are oth­er artists like Morehshin Allahyari who’s done a ton of work about dig­i­tal colo­nial­ism. But that’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing about recent­ly, is like if we cre­ate vir­tu­al spaces that are filled with these kinds of plants and things like that, is that a form of like recol­o­niza­tion or dig­i­tal colo­nial­ism? Or is that some­how kinder and more free­ing? I don’t know. So, those are some half-baked thoughts, but I’d love to talk about that more with you.

Levin: There’s remarks about the irony of ama​zon​.com and how instead of help­ing the actu­al Amazon, they sort of dumped crazy mon­ey into this weird simulacrum. 

haey­oung: Yeah.

Levin: There’s another—a prac­ti­cal ques­tion. For the in-office videos, it was your office, right? Did you ask per­mis­sion and explain your project? Which must’ve been a fun con­ver­sa­tion with man­age­ment. Or did you just sneak in in the weekend?

haey­oung: I just snuck in on the week­ends. And I have been told that they have seen the videos and think they’re weird. So that’s cool. 

Levin: It’s a pret­ty gener­ic office. You weren’t reveal­ing any cor­po­rate secrets.

haey­oung: Yeah, that’s what I figured.

Levin: Vernelle Noel, who is speak­ing next, she asks, ​“Question: the plant video is still in my mind. It feels like a Robin Hood bank/plant rob­bery. How do you come up with your con­cepts for what you want to say or question?”

haey­oung: Oh. Um… I don’t know. But like— I don’t know if it comes across this way but a lot of the stuff kind of starts as a joke. I like mak­ing work that makes myself laugh. And so a lot of this is a lit­tle bit like tongue in cheek, as I’m approach­ing it. And like I said, for me I’m sit­ting in this office every day for like two years and star­ing at this plant. So I have a lot of time to think about like, what I want my inter­ac­tion with this plant to be. So yeah, I don’t think I have a real­ly good answer for that, just kind of like star­ing at things a lot. 

Levin: I think— This is just a per­son­al reflec­tion. I think a lot of your work has the qual­i­ty of a joke. I agree it clear­ly starts with a joke, and it’s like a joke that I know you get, and then I want to under­stand it myself because there’s a…it’s not as sim­ple as a joke. There’s a multi-layered palimpsest kind of mul­ti­va­lent qual­i­ty to it, or a non­ver­bal qual­i­ty to it. So I’m like this is fun­ny but do I under­stand how. It’s real­ly interesting. 

I can’t wait for you to see all the great com­ments about your projects and pre­sen­ta­tion in the dis­cord. I want to thank you so much ann for your gift of your time today. And we’ll see you around. Can’t wait to see what you pro­duce next. Thank you so much for your time.

haey­oung: Thank you so much, everyone.